


Inappropriate

by PromisesArePieCrust



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-26 16:31:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5011792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PromisesArePieCrust/pseuds/PromisesArePieCrust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liquor-loosened tongues. Season 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He gave a light rap on her stained-glass sidelight.

She swung open the door: “Jack!” it was too cheerful, even for her. “Jaackk.” Over-articulated, preceded by a small stumble.

Well, this was something new.

“Miss Fisher, I…it seems you…I can come back another time…”

“Absolutely not, Jack. Please, come in!”

He held before his mind’s eye the different ways the evening could go, would he were to accept an invitation into a dark house, late at night, with an inebriated Phryne. His nobler instincts were rehearsing polite excuses for departure. His baser ones…were intrigued. But the decision was made for him— with the impatience of the mentally compromised, Phryne, tired of his dithering, abruptly drug him by the lapels into her foyer.

“Sorry— that was a bit rough. Are you frightened?”

“Yes.”

“Well, my dear, let’s steel your nerves and get you a glass…Or I guess it would be the other way ‘round, eh?, the glass first that would then steel your nerves…?” 

She continued chattering meaninglessly on her way into the parlour, and, with a quick, bracing exhale, he followed her.

She gave him an over-full tumbler of whiskey, and while Jack focused on not spilling the drink after the rather rough handover she’d given it, she slowly smoothed the jacket front she had mistreated, running her hands down the lapels, straitening it with a small tug at the bottom. Then, in an unselfconscious way unique to the inebriated and small children, she began to explore his clothing with her index finger, following it intently with her eyes. She ran the finger under his lapels, up his buttons, a half-circle at his collar. It wasn’t precisely sexual, more like she was an alien being, trying to understand textiles. 

“Thank you for the drink, Miss Fisher,” he said after a long moment, more to snap her out of her sartorial reverie than out of actual gratitude.

She shifted her gaze to his eyes, and her smile bloomed. She was unabashed, but realised her behaviour must have seemed a bit odd.

“I sometimes get twitchy itchy fingers,” was her explanation. Of sorts.

She pranced back to the perch she had occupied before his knock, swooped up her drink and lifted it in a salute which he mimicked, and they drank.

Were it not for the deeply unsettling day, he probably would have escaped from Miss Fisher’s porch before her abrupt handling of him. As it was, he needed company. Her company, as it happened, was beginning to take on a quality that he would only describe to his conscious-self as “refreshing”. (His unconscious-self had other ideas.) He took another large, grateful gulp of the whiskey, closing his eyes.

She gazed at him from across the room, and, despite her compromised faculties, she picked up on the difference between his standard world-weariness and the more substantial fog of hurt that now enveloped him. 

She prodded gently. “A picture is meant to be worth a thousand words, but that look was worth fourfold. Tell me.”

How does one recapitulate horror? The news journalists might have a better idea, he supposed, but it was a skill he never picked up, or desired to. He could relay clinical facts, write a report (victim found in bath; bruising seen on neck and face primarily, victim’s eyes swollen shut). But the sum of the details never equalled the whole of the experience, of the sorrow. That had been the problem, of course, after the war. One of them, anyway.

“It was a particularly grizzly domestic abuse case,” he slowly responded, allowing the drink to burn a bit. “I’m feeling rattled. Please, let’s talk about something else.“

She raised her eyebrows and refilled his glass.

‘So, Miss Fisher, I haven’t seen you quite this…uninhibited before.’

At this she laughed. But it was not her usual charmed, social laugh; it sounded tired, hollow. He became more cautiously alert through his own developing whiskey haze.

“Pondering the whims of Fortune, I suppose. It was not a good day to be a private detective…I’m going to stop taking the runaway cases, I think,” she added quietly.

This was all she said, but he could fill in what she hadn’t. He nodded. Many missing young women ended up in brothels, which she no doubt was searching. This might also have brought her near her childhood home, he realised. 

“I was hoping you would come tonight,” she brightened. “Perversely, I find your dourness and cynicism up-lifting.” She smiled, then grew serious. “I’ve missed you. It’s been a few weeks.”

At this he looked up at her hopefully—hopeful of what, he didn’t care to untangle. 

He felt eager suddenly to shift the direction of the conversation. Feeling companionship in the dark tenor of their separate days, and a wide smear of warmth in his chest from the strong drink, he hazarded a question he’d previously considered, but thought too personal.

“Why did you come here? Why did you leave England?”

She mused for a bit, head tilted. Naturally, it was something she had considered, but her thoughts were amorphous, unwritten, unvoiced—not something she’d needed to explain before. “Well, consider this: Aunt P is the least intrusive, warmest member of my family.” He raised his eyebrows. “Exactly,” she continued. “While it was pleasant enough to be in London, it was not far away enough from my parents. Also, I was not useful, I was withering. And the pressure to marry, which I thought would have been somewhat diminished by the lack of young men after the war, was not letting up.” 

“You don’t find marriage palatable.” It was a reiteration, not a question.

“I can’t speak of the whole institution. It was never…before the war I was too young to consider it, and after the war I was too disenchanted with anything people called ‘civil.’ And then Rene… and then back home, where the men I met were haunted, raw, volatile, much like myself— or were 20 years my senior at least. At any rate, I don’t, have never, fancied being claimed. It’s what it would feel like, wouldn’t it, to give up one’s name and…merge, as if being an individual was only a temporary part of a life continuum? It felt like I would just be lumped in as part of a transaction, like chattel. I couldn’t stomach it. Thankfully I had money and didn’t have to. I had thought of companionship…but, at any rate, I discovered a much more enjoyable kind of companionship than any marriage I’d ever witnessed…and so I never married.” Jack looked at his drink while considering her much more enjoyable brand of companionship, and she studied something at the far end of the wall before speaking. 

“Why did your marriage end?”

“Well…” he seemed stuck—her question was abrupt, and he was still thinking about her speech — so she nudged him a bit: “Yes, I know, the war…you changed…but that’s a bit feeble, isn’t it?” 

He barked a laugh at her temerity. “Maybe. I’ve always been pensive, Miss Fisher, so, you’re right— it wasn’t that I had suddenly become more serious or less open. It wasn’t a basic personality change. It was more like…feeling pinched? Feeling slights where there were none intended…Feeling constrained because most things that came from our mouths were hurtful, somehow. We couldn’t understand each other or understand our own anger, usually at silly, inconsequential things…I have wondered if the war only exacerbated a pre-existing habit in our interactions.” He seemed to be thinking of something specific before he continued. “At any rate, ‘end’ is too strong. My marriage is done on paper, but she’s not out of my life. It doesn’t just go away.”

She nodded, as though approving of his answer, then finished her drink, and set it on the end table. “Why haven’t you kissed me?” she asked.

“I thought it was my turn to ask an inappropriate question. Weren’t we volleying?”

“Hostess privileges.” 

“Alright.” He sipped his drink. “Why haven’t I kissed you? Do you want a long and pitiful answer or a short and pitiful one?”

“Well, at least I can see that the whiskey has done its job on you. But I admit I had secret hopes that you would be a chatty drunk rather than a maudlin one.” 

“There is nothing maudlin about honesty,” he said with clear, suddenly sharp eyes. “Also, I could just as truthfully have said ‘short and _hurtful_ or long and hurtful,’ if you’re worried that I’m only hard on myself.”

At this she laughed a sincere laugh, delight edged with more than a bit of a shock. “You are lucky that I am buffered by layers of confidence and whiskey.” 

“Do you have any more impertinent questions?” he asked.

“I’m full of them, but you haven’t answered my last one.”

“That one I can’t answer on a stomach that only contains whiskey.”

“You’re hungry?” The thought hadn’t occurred to her.

“Yes…I came straight from the station.” 

“Apologies. My, it must have indeed been some day. Come.” She led him into the kitchen, regarded the pantry contents, and ventured, “Omelet okay?”

She began to heat the stove and prepare a skillet, melting butter. He looked bemused, clearly unsure if he should trust her culinary skill, to which she shot him an annoyed look: “To quote my friend Mary, ‘Just because I choose not to practise the domestic arts, does not mean I am ignorant of them.’ Surly you’ve noticed I’m not fond of leaving vulnerable places when it comes to survival. And, for heaven’s sake, what did you think I did all that time in Paris? Or even in Collingwood?”

“I hadn’t thought about it. So you picked up cooking and street fighting in the city of love?” 

“The three things have more in common that you’d guess.” 

He came to stand next to her, and began grating cheese.

“What do you like to cook?” she asked while whisking the eggs.

“Cook?” 

“Of an evening. I would hope you are not completely dependent on the pie cart since Rosie left.”

“No, I…well, there are restaurants, of course, a few nights a week. I like to make skillet meals, I suppose; hash, shredded vegetables, herbs from the garden.”

She looked him up and down, smirking. “That looks about right.” He handled her blunt look-over with calm, and their eyes met and held, which softened her smirk to something like…embarrassment? Her moment of discomfiture touched him—she was usually so brassy, never more so than tonight. He allowed a long, quiet moment before he answered her previous question, his voice intimate. 

“Because it might feel too important…I haven’t kissed you because it might feel too important. To me.”

She nodded slowly, absorbing his meaning. She turned back to the skillet.

“Are you sober?” he asked her.

“Somewhat.”

“Why haven’t you kissed me?” 

She didn’t move.

“Are you drunk?” she countered.

“Somewhat.”

“Eat this,” she said as she slid the omelet onto a plate and placed it on the table. 

Well, _now_ she’d done it, she thought. She’d walked right into that one, hadn’t she. Her wit was not up to repartee, so she was only left with honesty…or leaving the room, which did occur to her.

“I haven’t kissed you because I haven’t taken anything seriously since 1918…because it might feel too important, that was a good way to put it.” 

She looked at him, proud that she could meet his eyes despite feeling so vulnerable. He began to wonder what the worst was that could happen, and realised with a start that the worst already had. He loved her, without remedy. He focused more intently on his meal.

They allowed silence. A strong, cold breeze came in through the window, effectively clearing some of the melancholy that had settled in the room. He finished his dinner and declined another drink. She saw him to the door, handing him his hat. He gave a last look back, hat in hand, ready to step into the night, then reconsidered. He turned to face her, leaned forward and kissed her on the apple of her cheek, gently, in slow-motion, finishing the gesture with an affectionate rub of her cheek from the tip of his nose.

“Now I’ve kissed you, Miss Fisher,” he breathed. “Good night.”


	2. Alternate Ending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ALTERNATE ENDING, ALTERNATE UNIVERSE: A little angstier, a little lustier

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For babsmd. I hope you like it. <3

“Because it might feel too important…I haven’t kissed you because it might feel too important. To me.”

She nodded slowly, absorbing his meaning. She turned back to the skillet, moved the food away from the heat, and turned off the stove.

After a minute of silence, during which Phryne seemed especially pensive, Jack became worried. “Miss Fisher,” he began.

“You call me Miss Fisher,” she spat out, “to distance yourself, to ensure…to remind yourself that I am, or should be, out of reach. You might as well call me ‘Sister Mary Catherine’ or ‘Your Majesty.’”

“Miss…Phryne,” he tried to cut in.

She laughed, a thin sound. “You call me Miss Fisher despite the fact that I am more intimate with you than with anyone. Lin was jealous of you, did you know that?” Her voice was growing thick.

Jack looked at her with surprise and felt his face colour. 

“He is an insightful man, was more aware than…” She cleared her throat, regretting bringing Lin into this. “You call me Miss Fisher to distance yourself because ‘a kiss would feel too important to you,’ meaning it shouldn’t feel important. I’m not important enough, worthy enough, to bestow your noble heart on. That’s what you meant, right? That’s why you said earlier that your answer could also be called ‘short and _hurtful_ or long and hurtful.’ You assume that because I enjoy…” she searched for a euphemism, “my body, and others’ bodies, that I’d be cruel, that I’d enjoy ‘bodies’ at the expense of others’ happiness. That’s the hazard of feminine desire, isn’t it? Why would any sensible man want to feel something _important_ for a woman like that?!” She was crying now, but the attitude of her shoulders, neck and jaw was regal.

Jack listened to her, a little stunned and a little ashamed. There was some truth to her assessment.

“Do you ever wonder why I haven’t kissed you?” she continued. She looked at him with the most guileless, open expression he had ever seen on her. “Surely you don’t think it’s out of demureness. I’ve certainly desired you, and I can see that you desire me.” She swallowed hard. “But I can see it’s an _unwilling_ desire. You’d rather not want me. I want to see _willingness_ , a willing desire, before I kiss you.” 

Jack nodded mutely, feeling tears heavy at his lower lids. He wouldn’t have guessed that he could hurt her, and so deeply. The knowledge that he could— _had_ — left a hollow feeling in his chest. But she did not have a complete picture. He spoke, low and soft: “That’s not what I think of you, that you’d be cruel. I confess that I find your…love of bodies…intimidating, and your stream of devotees off-putting. But I don’t think you’d be cruel. My unwillingness, as you put it, has more to do with…earlier, in the parlour, you all but told me that most men aren’t worth your time, are essentially interchangeable. Do you imagine men would enjoy feeling interchangeable, any more than women would?” 

The kitchen grew cold without the heat from the stove, and he noticed her shiver. He began to take his suit coat off to give her, but she reached out to stop him, her hand landing at his chest. The touch, feeling his heart pounding at his obvious distress, left her hand almost crippled from a jolt of feeling, of electricity. She spoke to his chest, letting her hand remain: “You are not, Jack, you are not interchangeable. You are not replaceable.” She looked up at him. “Phryne,” he responded. 

They kissed, mouths brought together with such force nearly to cause bruising. He brought his arms around her, warming her and pulling her close. “Phryne,” he whimpered, kissing down her neck, “Phryne,” repeated like a mantra, a prayer, a hope.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For deedee- I'm not sure I have your talent for writing sex scenes, but I hope this sates. ;)

She touched his hand, which had moved to her breast. “Jack,” she whispered, fearful of breaking the spell, but more fearful of misunderstanding. Was he acting on instinct or with volition? He was tipsy, tired, and emotionally raw. “Jack,” she began again, and he noticed a tremor in her hand. He met her eyes and raised his brows in an attitude of questioning, offering his most endearingly boyish look of concern. His lips glistened, puffy and red. Her heart lurched.

“Please tell me this is something you want, Jack, not just a concoction of circumstances.”

He took her hand and brought it to his lips, then to his heart. “I was wrong…kissing you feels just important enough,” he began. His eyes were contrite and sincere. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” he whispered, his voice catching. “You are the person I’d want least to hurt.” 

He kissed her again, and she felt a pleasant, feather-light massage in her ribcage, loosening her girded heart. She led him up the stairs.

They stood facing each other, enjoying the warmth of the fire in her room. He stepped toward her, running his hands down and back up her arms to warm her. She swayed, dizzy with desire and hope in equal parts. She brushed her hands up his sides and sighed, leaning into him, closing her eyes while savouring his animal warmth and smell. Holding her, he thought he might have been the happiest he’d been in his life. 

They swayed a bit together, clung tightly, holding on for support. He wanted to express what it felt like to hold her, the lightness he was experiencing that he didn’t know could exist within him anymore. He searched her face, and she saw his need to tell her something. She gave him the same open, disarming look as she had given him earlier, and it moved him deeply. He abandoned his need for words and kissed her hungrily.

Their kissing grew feverish, and remaining clad was no longer an option to entertain. He slid her blouse over her head, and she began to work at his buttons, though her fingers felt unnaturally thick. They kissed all the while, eventually managing to fully disrobe. When he’d slipped the last garter from her leg she smiled a glorious smile. She thought she might have been the happiest she’d been in her life.

They kissed their way to the bed, perching on the edge. Dimly, she became aware of the need to attend to practical concerns. She slid under the covers and with shaking hands positioned her diaphragm. She was mid-cycle and felt the slick fullness, now redoubled by her desire. When she brought her arm back out from the covers, he took her hand and gently, in sequence, sucked each finger. 

She launched toward him, climbing to meet him on top of the blankets. Sitting astride him, she searched his eyes for something she couldn’t articulate but found nonetheless. She motioned for him to put his head on the pillows. Keeping his eyes, she captured his erection and brought the head to her swollen fullness. Jack gasped. She slid cautious centimetres down his length, while her sighs, which he found indescribably sweet, brushed his cheeks. She looked gently euphoric, rosy-cheeked, artless, innocent. He felt such tenderness toward her. 

She could see that he was straining, trying to hold back, and when he reached up to still her hips she responded quietly “It’s ok, let go. Let me watch you.” She swept her hips in slow undulations, and he groaned. 

His orgasm was almost comically protracted, punctuated repeatedly with her name. He clung to her like a lifesaver in a rough ocean. As emotions so often do, they toppled and twisted around him, buffeting him, one feeding the other, trying to make him feel everything at once. Mingled with his satisfaction, his joy at holding her, kissing her, was the horror of his day, the months of his tortured longing for her, his years of quiet self-loathing over his failed marriage. All of his heartbreak crashed around him. But she was real, she was warm and sweet, and she wanted him. Loved him, even, he felt. He loved her, he knew. He loved her with a heart broken wide open.


End file.
